A report that some civil servants corrupted the biometric data of workers established in 2013, by secretly recruiting 400 workers whose names were inserted in the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, has compromised the integrity of the platform that saved N160 billion annually for the government. The databank should be scrutinised thoroughly in the light of this revelation.
The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, who made the disclosure last month, said the rot was inherited by the present government. Each of the victims was made to pay N400,000 to the racketeers who were Grade Level 17 officers. This means they cumulatively collected N160 million from their hapless victims.
However, it is reassuring that the affected officials have been sacked and their cases handed over to the police for action. “They invited these people to go and be captured on the IPPIS, and they even took cameras to hotels to get them captured. At the end of the day, the bubble burst,” the minister said. Though he was silent on the agency where the malfeasance occurred, the National Information Technology Agency, according to a ministerial committee, had increased its personnel from 74 to 245 between May 29 and December 31, 2015 in defiance of an official embargo.
Between 2010 and the first quarter of 2015, the Goodluck Jonathan administration had embarked on the project to weed out “ghost” workers from the payroll. At the end of it, the then Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, declared that 60,000 “ghost” workers and pensioners had been eliminated. She said, “We have handed over the matter to the ICPC (Independent Corrupt Practices and other offences Commission) to investigate those that are culpable and prosecute them. We are ready to give them the information that we have.”
It is not known that the ICPC, chaired by Ekpo Nta, acted on this. But if it did, what is the outcome since 2013? Nigeria is probably the only country where the state has full knowledge of the operations of criminal gangs in government, but does nothing to crush them. Instead, the criminals take advantage of official lethargy to wreak more havoc.
This background or foundation nurtured the “budget mafia” the Presidency screamed about recently, whose deviousness has seemingly sabotaged the 2016 budget even before its take-off, with over N1 trillion padded in it.
Faultless evidence of its existence came from the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, who on Monday disowned the purported budget of his ministry when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, where he was supposed to defend it. He stated that some issues which conclusions had yet to be reached on in the ministry had financial allocations already provided for them, even as he promised to re-table the authentic budget. He said, “In the revised budget as re-submitted, N15.7 billion for capital allocation has been moved to the other areas. Some allocations made are not in keeping with our priorities. There is nothing allocated to public health and family health.”
Similar condemnations from other ministers and heads of government agencies have compelled the parliament to declare the February 25 self-imposed deadline for passing the budget as unrealistic. This is not healthy for the business of governance.
These attempts to mug the treasury at a time those who brazenly did so in the last administration are being fished out and arraigned in courts by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and when the economy is gasping for breath, show how decadent the system is. Evidently, these evil elements parading themselves as civil servants have bared their fangs early to President Muhammadu Buhari’s government. He should respond with equal measure with a purge of the system; and it should be total. By so doing, the role of the bureaucracy as a critical agent of service delivery and national development would be restored.
Besides undertaking a scrupulous restructuring of the civil service to free it from the vice-like grip of kleptomania and non-performance, the President has to put the ICPC to task on the delivery of its statutory mandate as espoused in Section 6 (a to f) of the ICPC Act.
It is charged with, among others, “To examine the practices, systems and procedures of public bodies and, where such systems aid corruption, to direct and supervise their review.” When this is viewed against the background of the looting binge of public funds, an assessment of the agency’s scorecard cannot escape an awful verdict. No stealing of funds even by politically exposed persons succeeds without the connivance of the bureaucracy which, indeed, often initiates the scams.
We must end the increasing incidence of billions of naira of public funds being traced to the bank accounts of civil servants, who also own choice properties in Abuja and even abroad, as epitomised in the cases of those involved in the pension and oil subsidy scams.
In a bid to reform the civil service, the Federal Government had at different times set up the Philip Asiodu, Allison Ayida, Ahmed Joda and Stephen Oronsaye panels, whose reports it lacked the political will to implement. The new government should work out a “strategy aimed at increasing the benefits of being honest and the costs of being corrupt.” Buhari should dust off these documents and leverage their enduring recommendations to reposition the Civil Service for quality service delivery. His vow to ensure that from now, public officials and civil servants in the service of the Federal Government pay a heavy price for violating financial regulations or disregarding audit queries should not be a mere rhetoric.
